Yugoslavia means the state of the South Slavs. There were
the following linguistic and religious groups within its borders:
Serbs; Croats; Slovenes; Macedonians (these are all Slavs); Albanians;
Hungarians, Romanians.

The area owes its ethnic diversity to migrations of Slavs
into territory formerly part of the Roman Empire, at that time
occupied by the Illyrians (whose descendants are believed to be the Albanians).
Most of the area was later occupied by the Ottoman Empire. At that time
some of the inhabitants converted to Islam, especially in Bosnia.

The Christians are split into two main groups: the Croats
and Slovenes who are mostly Catholics; the Serbs and Macedonians
who are Greek Orthodox. The Croat language is almost the same
as the Serb language, but they are written with different alphabets,
reflecting the history of their conversion to Christianity, from
the west and east respectively. (Sir Fitzroy Maclean, the British
diplomat who liaised with Tito during the second world war, says
that not even Yugoslavs can distinguish the two peoples by spoken
language alone. This suggests that the dispute resembles that
in Northern Ireland where the peoples are only distinguishable
by religion and historical mythology.)

During the Napoleonic period part of the present territory
formed the Illyrian provinces of Napoleon's French Empire.

The state was created at the end of the first world war. It
was built out of: Serbia, which had been independent before;
Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina
which had been provinces of the Habsburg monarchy (Austria-Hungary)
- these already called themselves Yugoslavia and did not wish
to join Serbia; Montenegro, which had been an independent Serb
principality throughout the Turkish occupation and had been joined
to Serbia; Macedonia, which was disputed with Bulgaria. At first
the state was called the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

It was headed by the king of Serbia and between the world
wars some of the non-Serbs felt they had been incorporated into
a Greater Serbia. To some extent it was a creation of the Great
Powers who wished to restrain the chaotic nationalisms of the
Balkans which had sparked off the first world war. The tensions
between the two main peoples showed itself in the interwar period.
King Alexander was assassinated in 1934 at Marseille by a Macedonian
hired by the Croatian Ustashe. Out of fear of the imminent war
in 1939 the regent Paul had agreed to set up a federal
state in which Croatia would have had its own institutions. However,
invasion by the Germans and Italians occurred before this plan
could be put into effect. The Italians at once encouraged the
Ustashe (trained in Italy and modeled on the Italian fascists,
though more bloodthirsty and ruthless). Paul himself had tried
to get support from Hitler and Mussolini for Yugoslav neutrality.
Mussolini appointed a relative of the Italian king as King of
Croatia - but he didn't move there.

Later during the second world war the whole country was occupied
by the Germans who also separated off Croatia which they ruled
through the Ustashe's leader Ante Pavelic. The Ustashe brutally
killed many - 700,000 has been reported - Serbs and Jews. Slovenia
was partitioned and annexed to Italy and Germany. Kosovo also
was annexed to Italian-occupied Albania. Serbia was occupied
by German forces and ruled directly. Macedonia was joined to
Bulgaria, Germany's allies. Hungary occupied parts of the Vojvodina.

Two resistance movements formed: the Chetniks led by the royalist
General Draza Mihailovich; the Partisans led by the Communist
Josip Broz Tito (=Commander), who were favored by Winston Churchill
because he had been advised they were more likely to harm the
Germans. They received large amounts of military supplies. Did
they use these to fight the Germans or to fight the Chetniks?
The Chetniks fought more against the Partisans than against the
Germans, and indeed in many areas collaborated with the German
forces. Churchill may have later regretted his choice. Mihailovich
was tried and shot by the Communist government. Soviet troops
briefly occupied part of the country during the final defeat
of the Germans.

Post 1945
At the end of the war Tito, a Croat (Slovene mother), formed
Yugoslavia into a federation along the lines of the Soviet Union.
Thus each nationality had its own state but the whole was controlled
by Tito and the Communist party. Moreover, as in the Soviet Union,
the component parts had not joined voluntarily. There was first
a civil war between anti-Communists (Chetniks and Ustashe) and
Tito's Partisan army. At its end the anti-communists (many of
them Croatian Ustashe) were massacred - mass graves began to
be revealed after the events of 1991. The civil war also had
elements of a war between the Serbs and Croats, as the Communists
appear to have been more Croat than Serb.

Tito also sent Yugoslavs to Albania to set up a Communist
state there as part of his plan to create a Communist Balkan
federation which would have included Bulgaria and perhaps Romania.
The British and Americans sent many Yugoslavs back to the country
against their will. Most were anti-communist and were killed
on arrival. This is now a notorious error similar to the sending
of Russians who fought against Stalin back into the Soviet Union,
also in 1945-6.

Although he was at first allied with the Soviet Union, he
refused to allow Soviet troops into the country and broke with
Stalin in 1948 over Stalin's desire to control the Yugoslav party
in the same way as in the other east European states. (Tito pointed
out that Yugoslavia was the only east European Communist state
where the party had come to power by its own efforts.) Stalin
planned to form a Balkan Federation which he would control. The
other Balkan countries followed Stalin, and Yugoslavia became
isolated.

Yugoslavia then became an independent communist country and
was a founder member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Tito in fact was
a model for the one-party states or tyrannies which formed throughout
the post-colonial world. He received a good deal of support from
NATO as he played up the threat from Stalin's empire. However,
he took aid from both sides. In the period before 1939 he had
been an orthodox Communist living part of the time in the USSR
and faithfully following Stalin's policy changes. On gaining
power he began to differ from Stalin and his successors. His
beliefs seem to have genuinely changed. His main achievement
was to keep the country together.

Post Tito
Following the death of Tito in 1981 the system began to unravel.
He left behind a very weak federal government consisting of a
collective presidency so that no-one should follow him as a strongman.
The president of each of the six republics was to serve in turn.
Perhaps he did not care what would happen after him. When communism
collapsed in the rest of eastern Europe there were calls for
multi-party elections in Yugoslavia too. However, this removed
the only real cement of the state - the Communists at least had
a neutral attitude to religious differences and "nationalists"
were locked up.

By 1991 the big question was whether the separate republics
would break away. Croatia and Slovenia then claimed the adoption
of western multi-party democracy and a free market system (but
the claim of Croatia may be spurious), and said they wanted to
join the European Community. Serbia did not adopt a fully multi-party
system but continues with a communist party (renamed Socialist)
but much more like a classic fascist regime. As in Bulgaria, elections
confirmed the former Communist party in office. However, demonstrations
in Serbia in March 1991 suggested to the optimistic that this
might be only a transition period to a multi-party system. The
opposition has since failed to gain power after the government
party monopolized television and other media.

The leader of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, ended the autonomy
of two non-Serb provinces, Kosovo and
Vojvodina. This act may have destabilized the whole system. The
former is inhabited mainly by Albanians but has sentimental value
for Serbs as the site of battles against the Turks and a site
where Serbia was believed to have begun; the latter has a population
of Hungarians, Romanians and Croats as well as Serbs.

The precipitating event was probably the 14th Congress of
the Communist Party when Slobodan Milosevic refused compromise
and tried to vote down all Slovenian proposals. When they walked
out of the Conference, followed shortly by the Croats, Yugoslavia
was finished.

The Kosovo Albanians now demand a Republic of their own, entirely
separate from Serbia. Thi led to increased civil disturbance.
Now that Albania has adopted democracy there could be international
implications if the new Albania demands better rights for the
Albanians in Yugoslavia or even to annex them. The Kosovars might
request to join Albania. At present Albania with its collapsed
economy is in no condition to demand anything and is in danger
of being swallowed up by its neighbors but in the future may
be strong enough to demand the right to protect the Kosovar and
Macedonian Albanians.

The election of Franjo Tudjman as president of Croatia also
alienated the Serbs as, although a former Communist general,
he had published antisemitic pamphlets and did not repudiate
the Ustashe period. Instead he adopted the same symbols they
had used. This raised a fear that Croats might again attack Serbs.
He died before he could be tried at the Hague.

The state no longer exists, having even less substance than the Soviet Union.

Languages

Serbian

Croatian

(Dialects usually classified as the same language, written
in different scripts)

In 1990 it was a Communist single party state evolving, perhaps
towards a multi-party system, or possibly to dissolution. However,
Croatia and Slovenia, formerly part of the Austrian Empire, were
evolving fastest and Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia were evolving
very slowly.

The former Communist Party has renamed itself as Socialist.

Tito set up a strange system in which the head of state was
a committee made up of a representatives from each republic.
Each took it in turn to be the president of the Presidency. There
was also a Federal Prime Minister responsible to the Presidency.
There was an assembly which was never elected with multi-party
choice. Even before the civil war this system performed badly
and it was difficult to secure agreement. The Prime Minister
who ran the government was unable to exert much influence over
the republics, especially after Slobodan Milosevic became president
of Serbia with a policy of asserting Serbian grievances and desire
to dominate the whole. By the end of 1991 it was unclear whether
there was any government separate from that of Serbia. The army
was the last institution but it seemed to be under no-one's control.

New State
In June 1992 the parliament of the new state of Serbia and
Montenegro elected a single president and in July 1992 appointed
a prime minister, a California businessman, dismissed 29 December
1992, following the re-election of Milosevic. Its institutions
were unimportant in comparison to Serbia's.

In July 1997 Milosevic was elected president, apparently intending
to give the post real power, after he was constitutionally forbidden
to succeed himself in Serbia.

He was eventually voted out in an election in 2000 and sent
to the international War Crimes Tribunal at Den Haag, charged
with crimes against human rights. He died with the trial not
completed.

Josip Tito tried to make the Yugoslav economy a middle way
between the western and Soviet systems. State enterprises were
made self-managing, with elected managers and self-accounting.
The evidence is that it was little more successful than a conventional
Stalinist system. Presumably this was because the discipline
of the market was hardly present. As the Communist system collapsed
there was uncertainty about whether they would adopt a full-blown
western system.

Productivity is low and inflation was very high until the
currency was linked to the Deutschmark (1989).

But the Serbian government apparently decided to issue money
itself (January 1991) to meet its fiscal deficit and the losses
of its state owned industries. This of course destabilized the
currency and created near hyperinflation, which set in after
the civil war began. It probably caused the other republics to
secede economically by issuing their own harder currencies linked
to European currencies.

30% of the national income came from Slovenia, which accounts
for the desire to prevent it seceding from the federation.

Tourism which was an important source of foreign exchange
ceased and all other forms of industry were hampered by the
war.

This is the first area of the world where a war took place
among working nuclear power stations. As they are of Soviet design,
without containment and are considered dangerous by western standards
even in normal operation, this is a considerable hazard. Federal
(Serbian) air force has bombed close to the main Croatian power
plant.

During the war some of the worst atrocities have occurred,
reminiscent of Nazi behavior during the second world war. These
include: concentration camps, with mass executions; systematic
rape of women prisoners and civilians; torture; starvation; burning
of villages; deportations of people of the "wrong"
religion.